Your Guide to Effective Outreach Emails for 2X More Responses

How many new brand names do you hear weekly? The number is considerable since industries are expanding. With digitalization, the world becomes closer to us, so we, as consumers, come across new businesses every single day. 

From a business perspective, making your name heard and your logo seen in this chaotic marketplace becomes tougher. Reaching customers takes effort. Attracting them takes doubled effort. 

Email marketing and other digital marketing techniques are proven to hook digital consumers. From welcome emails and newsletters to lead-generation emails, there is one effective hooking email tactic to exploit: outreach emails. Also known as cold emails, outreach emails are used to connect with new customers, clients, or partners. It is like inviting them to collaborate. 

With outreach emails, a business directly appears in the potential customer’s mailbox. With the right strategy and tactics, response rates are due to rise, and customers are to be drawn into collaboration. Cold emails are beneficial both in B2B and B2C practices. The receivers have no or little clue about you and your business. So, time, resources, and effort come together to present the collaboration in the best light. This guide will equip you with the techniques to write winning cold emails. 

Write Outreach Emails that Get Responded 

With emails, you seek to convert possible prospects, move them from step one to two, or from wherever they are to the next stage. With so many emails being sent and received daily, capturing the reader’s attention is quite challenging. Writing a compelling piece is tougher than ever. Limited attention span in mind, here are tips you can utilize to attract readers.A man thinking about how to write outreach emails that get responses.

Research and plan through

There is one rule in marketing. When you know your audience, you know exactly how to target them. Research and planning come before starting any campaign. You increase the effectiveness of your outreach emails and improve your response rates after you have thoroughly researched who you are reaching out to, created the list of prospects and targets, and stated clear objectives for the campaign.

Let’s look at it in a more detailed example. Imagine you are a marketer for a software company that provides an online project management tool for small businesses. The steps of how you could plan for an outreach campaign are as follows:

  1. You identify the target audience: small business owners and managers looking for an affordable and easy-to-use project management tool. You can target businesses in specific industries, such as marketing, consulting, or design.
  2. You research the prospects: gather information from LinkedIn for those who fit your ideal target audience. Review their profiles, websites, and blogs to pick up their priorities and challenges.
  3. Create the outreach list: your list can include small business owners and managers who are most likely to respond positively to your message based on your research. You could segment your list into industry, location, or job title.
  4. Determine your goals: those can be scheduling X calls with prospects, getting X answers, making X amount of revenue. Be specific in what you want to attain.

You are ready to craft the first draft of your email. Knowing your target audience will make it easy to grab and keep them attracted. 

Write a captivating subject line

The subject line is the first place to start investing. With a subject line, you convince your readers to open the email or mark it as spam. The subject line is your chance to get a click. Remember the rule of keeping the interest and not making your readers bored. Start by personalizing the subject line. Based on statistics, personalization increases email open rates by 26%

  • Include the recipient’s name in the subject line
  • Address a problem specific to the recipient
  • Mention the recipient company’s values

Next is arising interest with the subject line. The reader will be captured if you could say something extraordinary, unique, or new to them. Your subject line should distinguish your email from hundreds of others in the inbox. 

  • Include intriguing words like, “reveal”, “secret”, “exclusive”
  • Leave a place for the reader to wonder
  • Include a question to pique interest 

With those two necessary points, you should also aim to keep the subject line between 6-8 words not to overwhelm the reader. It must be specific and to the point, to the pain point. 

A subject line is key to getting clicks on your outreach emails. By keeping them short, specific, relevant, and benefit-driven, you can capture your recipient’s attention and motivate them to open your message. With some testing and optimization, you can fine-tune your subject line strategy and achieve higher response rates from your outreach campaigns.

State the value clearly

In the business world, where everyone is trying to uplift, value is most sought after. You reach out to someone, but the least they care about is your boasting. What you offer to their company is more important. It is a two-sided process. So, your message must not be explicitly selling, but rather helping the recipient. 

Today’s marketplace is crowded. As a result, people are bombarded with countless emails daily. When you offer your value clearly, you secure your emails from getting into the trash box.

You’ve researched the industry, and grasped who you send cold emails to, so you know their problems. One of the best ways to offer value in your outreach email is to provide a solution to a problem that your recipient is facing. This could be a helpful resource, a useful tool, or a piece of advice that addresses their problems.

The value can be wrapped in offering relevant content that addresses their needs. For instance, you know the recipient company aims to have a better SEO ranking. With your emails, you could share a blog on tips for succeeding in optimization. After that, you present your SEO services.

With the invite to collaborate, ensure the recipients see where their benefits lie.  

Spice your message with humor

Like storytelling in email marketing, humor is also used to create a connection and common ground with your audience. People sharing culture, a community, or backgrounds also share humor. Even if humor is not always universal, you can create commonality in outreach emails and engage with the recipient using humor. Some general rules for using humor are:

  • be unique and show your personality, the business’s personality
  • keep jokes simple and stay away from dark humor
  • avoid sensitive topics and cultural taboos
  • remember, jokes are not one-size-fits-all A man getting ready to send his well-crafted outreach message and a hand ready to take it.When you involve humor, you can relate it to the target industry. Include a humorous anecdote or story: Let’s imagine you’re selling a productivity app; you could share a story about how you used to be so disorganized that you once missed a meeting because you forgot to set your alarm clock. 

    Another way to inject humor into your outreach emails is by using a funny image or GIF. Who doesn’t love a meme or GIF with their favorite cartoon character? Yet, it should relate to your message. The visual should be relevant to your main message and not offend the recipient.

    Finish the message with a CTA

    How do you measure and mark your emails as successful? How many people opened, read, or paid attention? You catch the attention, you push them to open and read, but the final step and the measurements are seen in the number of people who took the desired action.

    Let’s say you had set the goal to get 50 new sign-ups for your newsletter. At the end of the campaign, the number of people who have signed up will indicate your outreach’s success. 

    How do you get them to take action? Of course, with a call to action. A call to action, CTA, is a button at the end of your message that takes the reader to the next stage. A CTA is a must-to-have element and should not look convincing but rather be the natural continuation of the message. To motivate a reader to click the CTA, here are quick tips:

    • Mention a specific date and time 

    e.g., Let’s book a call on March 4th at 11 AM

    • Leave a like to book the call

    e.g., Book a quick call! Here is the link

    • Restate you USP

    e.g., Ready to discuss how to boost your traffic?

    • Ask an open-ended question

    e.g., What’s your business sales priority?


    Above attracting the reader, you should work to personalize your outreach emails, explicitly highlight the offered value, and keep it short and sweet.

    Let’s sum it up!

    Whether you want to collaborate with new clients and partners or acquire new customers, outreach emails are the place to start. Reaching out via email is an accepted digital marketing strategy where big and small businesses are vying for attention.

    Cold emails equally benefit B2B and B2C practices; the trick is how you compose and communicate your message. With so many emails coming and going, you should employ the right tactics to capture the reader’s short attention. Research and planning are the initial steps to writing an effective outreach email. You discover the exact audience to reach out to. Next, you create the list of prospects and identify your objectives. 

    These keynotes are spiced with personalization, humor, simplicity, and valuable offers. And in the end, you must not forget a strong CTA as a final shot leading to conversion. 

SEO Content Writer

Hripsime Manukyan

Hripsime is an avid SEO Content Writer at SayNine. She is self-driven and self-motivated to create content on topics in branding, marketing, and advertising. She has set off writing for SaaS websites and enjoys the process of creating authentic content. You can find her composing a piece, teaching English, practicing yoga, exploring nature, or delved in a book reading.